Life in the green fast lane

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Fremont Supercharger

A few weeks ago, I had the occasion to spend some time in the East Bay before returning for an event on the peninsula. In between I had some time to kill and decided to visit the Fremont Supercharger.

Fremont Supercharger and Delivery Center

The Fremont Supercharger is located just in front of the Tesla factory visitor lobby or ‘Store and Delivery Center’. For customers wanting to pick up their car and go on the factory tour, you start in the same location. There is a guard at the gate but they wave Model S’s right through. The lobby connection is nice as there is a public restroom, free wi-fi and a coffee machine available 10am-6pm Monday through Saturday and 12-5pm on Sundays.

The disadvantage of this location is that it is quite distant from other typical more urban activities. Within a fifteen minute walk are two restaurants: a Thai restaurant and a taqueria, oddly called Las Vegas Taqueria. On the official Tesla page amenities listed include “shopping: Tesla Factory Store” incase you want a Tesla t-shirt.

Tesla generally avoids putting superchargers in densely populated areas. I suspected one car was there to avoid home electricity chargers, but several other cars seemed to simply be on road trips. When I was in there on a weekend mid day, all eight chargers were almost always in use, but there was quite a bit of turnover of vehicles and I did not see anyone waiting.

Near the charging station, a few solar panels are mounted on a pedestal. This set of panels only contains 18 panels, which is only enough to power a modest sized home and does not power the superchargers. The only supercharger station I know of 43 worldwide stations that actually has solar is the one at SpaceX in Hawthorne, near Los Angeles. I do not know why the rollout of solar power superchargers is so slow. I would like all my travel in my Model S to be powered by the sun.